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Can You Use Paypal To Pay Private Sellers?


cryptastix

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I think there's a way for the sender to voluntarily pay the fee, make sure you and the recipient agree in advance who is going to pay it.

 

Edit: actually, I think maybe that only applies to 'personal' payments; in business transactions the recipient always pays the fee (but you could work around that by calculating what the fee is going to be and sending a bit extra to cover it).

Edited by alex_holden
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I think there are international fees with Paypal if you're not in the same country, as well as the few% that Paypal takes from the recipient as the fee for service. If you're in the same country (or on the same currency), a direct bank transfer usually eliminates all fees for everyone. Within the UK, or within the Eurozone, that seems to be popular choice, but America and Canada haven't *quite* joined the 21st century yet there (though it's gotten a *lot* better in the past couple years.

 

These days everyone I know under age 30 is using Venmo instead of Paypal. I haven't tried it yet, but it's The Hot New Thing. Again, both people have to have it, so if whomever you're paying doesn't have / want it, it's not an option.

Edited by wayman
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Venmo is owned by Paypal and has similar fees.

 

For payments that include currency exchange Transferwise is hard to beat. I've used it successfully for a number of years now for payments between Sterling and Euro. Paypal is still quicker and cheaper for very small amounts. The link above will give you your first transfer free of fees.

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The fees Paypal charge are a mystery to me and seem to change at regular intervals, such that I have tried to avoid it with my own clients. I get the feeling that if both seller and buyer have their paypay account linked to their bank account, rather than their credit card, the fees are not so bad, but if the money is charged to a card, I've typically had to pay 4-6% as a seller. Obviously it depends where the buyer and seller are located, but when I've looked into it before, to try to work out the costs beforehand, it's been very difficult to get accurate information - I got the feeling they obviously had an interest in hiding these things deep into the small print....

 

Adrian

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The fees Paypal charge are a mystery to me and seem to change at regular intervals, such that I have tried to avoid it with my own clients. I get the feeling that if both seller and buyer have their paypay account linked to their bank account, rather than their credit card, the fees are not so bad, but if the money is charged to a card, I've typically had to pay 4-6% as a seller. Obviously it depends where the buyer and seller are located, but when I've looked into it before, to try to work out the costs beforehand, it's been very difficult to get accurate information - I got the feeling they obviously had an interest in hiding these things deep into the small print....

 

Adrian

Especially with international transactions, you'll never know how much and where gets lost in the bank system in between; intermediate banks may take out what seem arbitrary amounts later on decared as transaction fees, exchange fees or whatever. You'll never find out asking your bank because they only see what is left on their end, there may have been many stations in between. So that is not a Paypal specific issue...

 

Coming back to the original q: I've done it, and it's very convenient. However, I have closed my account when Paypal changed their terms and conditions radically about three years ago. In a nutshell, by signing up you'll agree that ALL data going over the Paypal system - your bank account information, your identification data as well as details of ALL transactions you make through Paypal - will be forwarded to and used by dubious data miners at their discretion. As it's being stipulated "data is the new currency." It's up to everybody to make that (IMHO) nightmare come true or reject it by going through other channels.

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Following up on Theo's suggestion.

 

I just had cause to pay US$325 so I did a quick comparison on how much it would cost me in C$. The exchange rates are all taken within a few minutes of each other.

 

Canada Post: C$462.50 (Exchange rate of 1.40, C$7.50 fee)

My bank: C$460.65 (Exchange rate of 1.39, US$7.50 fee)

Transferwise: C$444.69 (Exchange rate of 1.36, C$3.22 fee*)

 

The day rate at the time was 1.36, the same as Transferwise so no extra hidden fee in the exchange rate.

 

[*] The Transferwise fee is a percentage, about .95%, so this would go up with the amount whereas the other fees are fixed amounts. Still 3-4% difference, well worth having on a $2,000 concertina.

Transferwise looks cheaper and more convenient. I understand that, unlike PayPal, there are no fees for the recipient. Is this true?

 

Don.

Edited by Don Taylor
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Following up on Theo's suggestion.

 

Transferwise looks cheaper and more convenient. I understand that, unlike PayPal, there are no fees for the recipient. Is this true?

 

Don.

Yes, I've sent and received with TransferWise, the default is that the sender pays the fees.

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The trouble with "fees" -- or the alleged lack of them -- where currency conversion is involved is that the buy-sell spread is not considered a "fee", and it can vary considerably. The buy-sell spread is the difference between the exchange rate in the one direction and the inverse of the rate in the other direction. When making international transfers (Denmark has its own currency), I always have my Danish bank do the conversion -- regardless of the direction, -- because the amount I lose through their buy-sell spread is usually less than half that of banks in the US, UK, etc.

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Jim's point is true of cashpoints / ATMs as well in my experience. In the UK, withdrawing funds from an American bank account, many machines present the option of letting the UK bank calculate how many $$$ to ask the American bank for (and then the UK bank doing the conversion), or telling the American bank to send the specified number of £££ (so the conversion happens at the American bank); and for a given number of £££ cash, the amount deducted from my $$$ account is invariably lower by selecting the UK bank at this point -- in my experience at least.

 

I've done tests within minutes for £100 cash on the same UK cashpoint, where the real-time exchange rate as identified by the machine (and by a phone app) remains the same. The American bank performing the transaction results in an extra 2-3% being "lost" to me, and this would certainly add up were I not careful to avoid it!

 

This may not be a universal effect, but it's certainly been true given all permutations of two American bank accounts and three UK banks' cashpoints that I've tried.

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I use paypal quite a lot both in the ordinary ;take the money directly from my bank' but also i have a paypal credit account where they offer 0% on purchases over £200 (i think) for 4 months. This is often very useful on ebay but you dont seem to be able to use it when buying from 'private' individuals

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